Thailand earthquake prevention experience

Recently, countries in Southeast Asia continually appear earthquakes, raising concerns from people living or working in high-rise buildings in major cities. Chiang Mai suffered an earthquake of 4.3 on the Richter scale exactly one week ago. Just last Saturday there was a 5.6-magnitude earthquake in Burma. Last month the Lao earthquake rocked the tall buildings in Hanoi.

Chulalongkorn University recently announced its work on earthquake prevention and concluded that Bangkok buildings need to be able to withstand earthquakes of 7 on the Richter scale.

Experience 20 years

Professor Pennung Warnitchai from AIT University quoted Bangkok Post saying that thousands of Bangkok residents could die if a moderate-sized earthquake occurs right now.

The Bangkok Post says 3600 buildings in Bangkok are not safe enough according to new standards (Photo: Davidbarber)

Thailand is the land near the intersection of two earthquakes in the world, but the earthquake problem is just beginning to be noticed by Thai scientists 20 years ago when big cities as Bangkok started building tall buildings.

However, their 20-year experience is also worth paying attention to Vietnam so as not to go wrong. One of their great things is to quickly react and take immediate measures, ie not strong on research but quickly apply scientific advances to life. For example, Thailand is the first country to invest in building a tsunami alarm system after the 2004 Christmas disaster.

Recently, the new law changes the anti-earthquake standards for buildings.

Since 1997 Thailand has laws regulating buildings over 15 meters high, but only requires normal earthquakes.

New reinforcement or construction

Now increasing with the new standard, Bangkok hardly has any high-rise buildings that are safe enough; According to Bangkok Post, there are more than 3600 buildings that do not meet the new standards. That means that when the new law is passed, developers will have to rush to spend more money to reinforce the buildings in use.

It is certainly more expensive than the initial investment, while still in the process of rough construction.

The Energy Complex Co (EnCo) Group is investing an additional 50 million Baht (about 1.5 million USD) for the project to build 6 36-storey buildings in Bangkok, which, according to the company's explanation, only increased by 1%. with capital estimates.